Warning: Don’t Try These Excuses

Frozen car keys, a functionally fashionable cement duck and coin-operated newspaper machines top this year’s list of most outrageous excuses for arriving to work late, according to a new Career Builder study.

More than a quarter (26 percent) of workers admitted to being tardy at least once a month, and 16 percent are late once a week or more, the study found.

The survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive from Nov. 1 to Nov. 30 and included more than 2,600 hiring managers and 3,900 workers nationwide.

Traffic is the most common culprit, causing tardiness according to 31 percent of workers, the study said. Other factors include lack of sleep, the need to drop off the kids at daycare or school, bad weather and public transportation delays.

Hiring managers shared some of the most memorable excuses they’ve heard from employees who were late getting to the office, including:

• Employee dropped her purse into a coin-operated newspaper box and couldn’t retrieve it without change (which was in the purse). • Employee accidentally left the apartment with his roommate’s girlfriend’s shoes on and had to go back to change. • Employee’s angry wife had frozen his truck keys in a glass of water in the freezer. • Employee got a late start because she was putting a rain coat on her cement duck in her front yard (because rain was expected later that day). • Employee’s car wouldn’t start because the breathalyzer showed he was intoxicated. • Employee attempted to cut his own hair before work and the clippers stopped working, so he had to wait until the barber shop opened to fix his hair. • Employee’s car was attacked by a bear (had photographic evidence). • Employee drove to her previous employer by mistake. • Employee claimed to have delivered a stranger’s baby on the side of the highway.